A SUMMER AT EVER AFTER HIGH HAD ITS advantages. Kitty Cheshire and Lizzie Hearts had free run of the castle, with only Mrs. Her Majesty the White Queen as chaperone. And the White Queen’s idea of chaperoning was to meet the two girls before breakfast, challenge them to “think of six impossible things—quick! Be quick,” and then leave them alone for the rest of the day.

Freedom!

She and Lizzie played endless rounds of croquet, shopped in Book End, and spent teatime2 with Madeline Hatter at her father’s Tea Shoppe. But after two months, Kitty had the unreasonable urge to actually see some of their other Ever After High friends. It was nonsense, surely! Lizzie and Maddie were by far the least annoying people she knew.³

But still, when Kitty thought of all her classmates returning tomorrow to start their Legacy Year, she actually felt relieved.

Tomorrow. Kitty stretched out on a library bookcase and felt exhausted by the idea of having to wait till tomorrow. And whenever boredom inched into Kitty, she began to get ticklish in her tricksy brain, impatient in her impudent toes, and she generally all around craved for chaos.

“I believe I finished the last Wonderland book in this inadequate library,” Lizzie was saying. “I am therefore bored. Croquet?”

“I think I’ll just stay here for a while,” said Kitty. “In the library. Curl up with a good book.”4

After Lizzie left, Kitty examined her nails. Fluffed her hair. Yawned with teeth exposed.

“I am bored,” Kitty said aloud.

“Bored,” she repeated.

“Bored bored bored. Boooored. Booooo. Boogie. Beauregard. Banana squash.”⁵

She nodded and said it again. “Banana squash.”

But even with such fantastic words as banana squash to entertain her, boredom still nipped at her heels. Living in this school all summer felt far too much like being in a cage.

“Cats don’t like cages,” she said to the library. “Or bubble baths. Or empty sardine cans.”

Silence. Kitty wrinkled her nose.⁶

So Kitty blinked and disappeared.

She was In-Between. Though now she was invisible to the world, the world was not invisible to her. The library was still there, though faded, gray, and wispy, as if everything were underwater.

She could move so much more quickly In-Between, with no troublesome people or furniture or reality to get in her way. In one step, she reached the far end of the library. Another, and she passed through the wall into the gray trembling shadow of the outside world.

If the sun blazed in the sky, she could spot no sign of it here. There were no shadows In-Between—or rather, everything was shadows. And Kitty raced through the shadows of the Real quicker than a jubjub bird flits after a lemon meringue pie.

Kitty poked her head into the Mad Hatter’s Tea Shoppe to see what chaos she could cause, but then laughed at herself. What more chaos could she bring into a shop where every surface was covered in doors, teapots flew to you, and coffee cake coughed? Actually, bringing “order” into the Mad Hatter’s shop would be funnier than “chaos,” and order definitely wasn’t Kitty’s thing.

The Mad Hatter ran from the kitchen, walked right up to where Kitty’s invisible head was poking into the shop, and shouted, “No room! No room!”7 His words were wobbly and watery, the way she heard all real-world sounds that drizzled into In-Between.

Kitty stuck out her tongue at him and pulled her head back through the wall.

A very ordinary-looking girl was walking down the street—every hair smoothed into place, her gray clothing perfectly ironed, her posture so stiff her vertebrae must fear her to stay so solidly in line. Clearly a new student arriving at Ever After High from some kingdom far, far away. Kitty giggled. Ordinary people were hilarious! And also a hexcellent way to introduce some riddle-diculous order into chaos…

Kitty appeared behind the girl and tapped her shoulder. “Hello.”

The girl turned, taking a step back. “Oh! Do I know you? Um… I am Clara Lear.”⁸

“I am… a helper,” said Kitty with her customary smile. “An official Book End helper. What can I help you find? ’Cause I’m so helpy like that.”

The girl sighed. “Everything here seems to be inside out and backward! Not at all nice and neat like home. I just need someplace normal and quiet, where I can sit down and rest without any unpleasant surprises.”

Kitty’s smile widened. “No place more ordinary, regular, and surprise-free than the Tea Shoppe on the corner!”

“Thank you, Book End helper,” said Clara Lear. Posture perfectly perfect, she marched into the Tea Shoppe.

Kitty hung around a moment to see what kind of mischief she’d caused by introducing an ordinary girl into an extraordinary shop. But her nose began to twitch, her toes wiggled, and a moment later, Kitty disappeared.9

She leaped around the In-Between version of Book End, passing through the walls of shops, and dived headfirst into the Book End wishing well. Traveling by wishing well while In-Between was a roll of the dice. She never knew where she’d end up, but wherever it was, she’d get there faster than a mome rath squeak.

She popped out of the well as dry as a shadow. Moving around In-Between was a bit like running, a little like dreaming, and a lot like swimming. She kicked her legs in the gray sunless, airless shadow world and swam above the treetops to get high and spy out her location.10 Ah-ha, there was Sleeping Beauty Palace!

Purr-fect.

Kitty continued her dry, airy swim to the third floor of the palace and peeked into a window. Briar Beauty was still asleep in bed. No surprise.¹¹ Open trunks hinted that she would be spending the day packing for school. Now, how to cause the most mischief?

Kitty appeared back in the Real, and colors filled the room, mostly shades of pink. She began to poke around. A hot-pink, rose-embossed diary lay on the bedside table. Kitty flipped through it, hoping for some highly silly princess gossip she could use for chaos-causing.12 But Briar had simply jotted down pages and pages of party ideas, like Book-to-School Party and Legacy Day Dance. Some entries, like Litter Awareness Luncheon and The Pretend-You-Are-a-Duck Party, made it clear that Briar could turn any event into a spellebration.

Beneath Briar’s bed was a chest full of jewelry. Ah-ha! The school’s number one fashionista would pop like a glitter bomb if all her precious accessories disappeared. A hexcellent prank. Kitty was no cat burglar; she wouldn’t steal anything. But to simply relocate…

Kitty carefully opened the chest, filled her hands with the jewelry, and disappeared. She let herself sink through two floors and speed-skipped down a corridor, following voices into the ballroom.

The hardwood floor, polished smooth by centuries of dancers, was cluttered now with chairs, stools, and coatracks, all draped with white bedsheets.

“Mom said not to take the silk sheets off her bed anymore,” Kitty heard one little Beauty brother say from somewhere inside the massive fort.

“Yeah, but she’s asleep,” said another. “Probably.”

Yes, this would do. Kitty reappeared just long enough to place the jewelry in the center of the room and promptly vanished.

A few moments later, she heard a Beauty princeling cry, “Treasure!”

“Treasure? Let’s play pirates!”

“Yo ho ho!”

Kitty snickered. Chaos! Sweet, sweet chaos! This was her destiny, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and become the next riddling, teasing trickster of Wonderland, the fablelous Cheshire Cat. And after such a ho-hum-drum summer, she could definitely use more tricksy practice. After all, she was just weeks away from signing the Storybook of Legends and committing to her destiny.13

A few leaps and a dive later, Kitty hopped out of another wishing well into another kingdom. Kitty wiggled, sighed, and popped back into the Real. Spending too much time In-Between made her feel shivery and odd, as if she were made of rubber.14

So Kitty walked from the wishing well along a lane toward a large, many-spired castle. A group of villagers were skipping along.

“Hello there,” Kitty said with an unsettling smile. “Can you tell me where we are?”

“Why, the most perfect kingdom in all of Ever After!” said a round-cheeked, dimpled little girl.

Kitty noticed the I APPLE T-shirts and buttons.

“Ah-ha,” said Kitty.

That must be White Castle up ahead. Her unsettling smile settled.

“I love living here,” said a redheaded young man.

“Me too,” said a twinkly-eyed old man.

The villagers all sighed in unison and continued on their way.¹⁵

Bunnies and robins hopped across the lane. Elegantly dressed dwarves gathered flowers, humming to themselves. The breeze was just strong enough to rustle the tree branches, sending white blossoms raining down like confetti.

Kitty entered the castle courtyard and spied Apple White making a fond farewell to her parents and climbing into the fanciest, most enor-malous hybrid carriage Kitty had ever seen. Seriously, you could fit, like, a hundred clowns in there, or at least twenty normal people.

Kitty disappeared, swam inside the carriage just as Apple climbed in, and squeezed between the shadows of two servants.

The servants were talking about Apple White’s beauty.

“Just look at her eyes, her skin,” whispered a maid.

Apple’s pale cheeks blushed. Clearly she was overhearing everything.

Let’s see, how to push the Fairest of the Halls’ buttons?

“So beautiful,” said another servant. “The perfect Snow White.”

Kitty let just her smile appear, there in the back of the carriage, where no one could see it.

“Well, except for the hair,” Kitty’s mouth whispered. “A shame she was born blond.”

She disappeared her mouth quickly before she laughed out loud. She did backward somersaults, laughing out loud in the shadow world as the hybrid carriage drove on.

Kitty leaped and floated through Apple’s home, occasionally allowing her hand to appear in the Real in order to knock over a vase, rearrange throw pillows, or leave fingerprint trails on otherwise spotless windows.

She shadow-sneaked up to Apple’s room, giggling over plans to hide Apple’s One Reflection action-figure collection. But Apple’s bedroom wasn’t empty.

Snow White was sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed. She picked up a pillow, held it to her face as if breathing in the scent, and then hugged it to her chest.

Snow White’s sad eyes and slow exhale stopped Kitty. She squirmed, uncomfortable. And then she left.16

On to another wishing well. This one spit her out on a mountaintop, the courtyard of an ancient and impressive castle. She passed through the walls and inside to a humongous ballroom. A plethora of mostly blond, tall, graceful people laughed and talked and ate and danced.17

The Charming Family Ball! Kitty snickered, an amused hiss.

Like the Whites, these Charming folk were obsessed with cleanliness. Kitty float-spun to a garden on the mountainside courtyard. She slipped into the Real to stomp around in a plant bed, smearing her shoes with dirt. Then she popped back into an empty hallway. She was walking along, snickering and leaving her dirty footprints all over their nice, clean floor, when she sniffed something unusual. Kitty followed the scent to a closet.

A changeling! She detected the most definite sawdusty tang of a changeling.18 What in Ever After was a changeling doing at a Charming Family Ball? Kitty popped into the closet, nothing visible but her eyes, and spotted a yellow-eyed changeling sitting in the dark and dressed in the disguise of a Charming princess. The yellow eyes looked right at her own.

“What issss here?” the changeling hissed.

Gulping, Kitty disappeared her eyes, too. Even In-Between, her heart beat harder. Her fingers twitched, wanting to stay and see what might happen next. But her shadow legs shivered, wanting to move on. Even invisible, Kitty didn’t feel quite safe so close to a changeling.¹⁹

She swam-ran her way up and reappeared on the roof. There seemed to be no higher spot in all the world than a mountaintop Charming castle.

Kitty took a deep breath and shouted, “Banana squash!”

Kitty ran and leaped about, from chimney to roof rail, taking full advantage of her fantastic Cheshire balance. The freedom was exhilarating. And if she ever happened to slip (ha!) she could always just pop into In-Between before she fell far enough to hurt herself.

As soon as she’d been old enough to walk, her mother had taken her to the Tumtum Grove in Wonderland, together leaping from treetop to treetop. Now, racing along the ridgepole of the Charming palace roof, she looked behind her, half expecting to see her mother there, grinning and chasing after her, laughing into the sky.20

“Run, Kitty, run!” her mother would say. “Make them chase you and never catch you. You are a Cheshire, my riddle-icious kitten. You are the wind itself!”

The spicy scent of Tumtum resin seemed to fill Kitty’s nostrils. She threw back her head and laughed.

“They can chase all they want, Mother,” Kitty called out. “I am a Cheshire!”

A smell caught Kitty’s attention, yanking her thoughts back to the present. The scent of someone she knew, but up on the roof?

Curiosity had never hurt Kitty. She crept along, her feet silent on the roof tiles, following the peachy, creamy smell. By Humpty Dumpty’s shell, it was Darling Charming! Locked up in a metal box on the roof! Honestly, and people said that Wonderlandians were weird.

Kitty had spied on enough Charming family events to guess what was going on—Darling was waiting to be rescued. Talk about scratch-out-your-eyeballs boring.

Keeping invisible, Kitty crept closer. Her hand appeared in the Real, unlatching the box’s door from the outside. Darling seemed to hear her and looked up, but Kitty disappeared her hand again and leaped away, running along the In-Between rooftops, leaping over chimneys, and laughing in the wind. Darling clearly loved waiting in roof boxes. Would she stay in the unlocked box? Would she cry that her precious rescuing game was ruined?21

Kitty’s feet still longed to keep moving, keep moving, so she didn’t stick around to see the hilarity unfold.

Another wishing well later, Kitty crouched on the roof of a café, watching Cedar Wood sniffle at flowers and generally look waifish and homesick, even though she was still home.

Kitty yawned hugely, all her teeth exposed. How imploringly, roaringly boring this all was.

But then a giantish boy with skinny fingers started pointing them at Cedar and making a hullabaloo and fussy-fuss.

“Tell us what it’s like to be a fake puppet girl?” he said in rudish, brutish tones.

Kitty wouldn’t say that Cedar Wood was her friend. Did Kitty have friends to speak of? She stopped to consider but got bored with the thought and, yawning, decided to think about cheese instead.22

Her cheese reverie was interrupted by that tall boy mean-wording Cedar again.

“Tell us more, Cedar Wood! What are you most scared of?”

And Cedar ran away, sniveling and sad-ish. Cedar, who last year went into the Castleteria kitchen herself and made a mug of cinnamon milk for Kitty when she’d had a cold.

Well. If Kitty did have a friend… it was Lizzie Hearts. And Madeline Hatter. But besides them, she’d say it was almost Cedar Wood. And no one, not even towering boys with skinny fingers, messes with one of Kitty Cheshire’s almost-friends!23

Time for some lesson-teaching, that’s what, tut-tut.

Kitty hung off the roof right behind the boys, allowing just her mouth to reappear. She whispered, “Dare you to go swimming.”

“What?” said the taller boy. “You dare me to do what?”

“I didn’t say anything,” said the shorter boy.

“Dare you to go swimming right now,” Kitty whispered.

“What, you don’t think I don’t know how to swim or something?” The taller boy threw his towel over his shoulder and stalked off, muttering, “I’ll show you.”

Kitty’s mouth snickered. By the piles of empty plates on their table, these boys had eaten a king’s ransom worth of sweets. Everyone knew that swimming right after overeating would give them a terrible stomachache.24 Well, that’s just what he deserved for being bullyish and nasty-eyed at Cedar Wood.

Despite her recent victory, the cutesy seaside village bored Kitty, so she ran through the shadow world, zooming faster than a falcon flies, and tumbled headfirst down another wishing well.

No town, no palace nearby that Kitty could see. She popped into the Real and spun around in the fragrant woods, sunlight filtering through the round aspen leaves, brightening the soft needles of the evergreens. Animals crept out of sight, but to Kitty their scents were as clear as road signs.

And now a human scent.

Sniffing her way, Kitty tracked down a farmer wandering through the woods. He tiptoed, his eyes scanning this way and that, his fear priming him for a hexcellent trick.

Kitty hid behind some bushes, pulled out her two ponytail holders, allowing her purple hair to fall over her face. She arranged her cat-eared hat on her head, and then popped up suddenly.

“Aaoooooowww!” Kitty howled.

“Aaah!” the farmer screamed. “Aaah! Wolf!”

Ha! She looked nothing like a wolf. Unless you were a frightened farmer afraid of meeting one. The Huntsman family lived nearby. That ought to get their attention.

Kitty disappeared and leaped through the forest, leaving no track for a Huntsman to follow. When she reentered the color-rich woods, she smelled human again, but not the farmer. No, it was surely Ashlynn Ella. Her scent was a mix of cypress tree, lily of the valley, lemon cleaning soap, and the crinkly paper that lines new shoe boxes.

Kitty climbed into a tree’s canopy and watched for a time, finally spying Ashlynn running hither and thither and blither, coddling bunnies and consoling fawns and generally knee-deep in animal drama.

After sorting out several fauna issues, Ashlynn seemed about to head home. Kitty snickered. If she could keep Cinderella’s daughter busy in the woods, she’d have no time to finish her chores and pack for a new school year.

Invisible but for her hands, Kitty pinched a rabbit and blamed it on its sister, appeared suddenly to scare a fawn and again to tease a family of quail, and finally cupped a bird’s nest out of a tree and placed it on the forest floor.

“Oh dear, I’ll help you!” Ashlynn called out at the sounds of frightened, needy bleats and cheeps. “Don’t worry, my little ones. Ashlynn will take care of you.”

Kitty watched Ashlynn rush around, solving fuzzy, pawed, quivering-nosed drama. But then she caught a whiff of Hunter Huntsman—the scent of wood smoke, fir tree shavings, and soy turkey patties. Kitty wrinkled her nose and disappeared.25

Kitty fell down another wishing well. She climbed out into a rugged countryside. Here, the woods were ragged with wild, uplifted, crisscrossing limbs, as if the trees had been frozen in the middle of casting a spell. In the distance, a black stone castle clung to a craggy cliff overlooking a wild, tossing sea.

An uncharacteristic shiver went galumphing down Kitty’s spine.

She air-climbed up to a tower window and plunged through the wall. The inside was as dark as the outside, heavy velvet curtains shifting in invisible drafts, looming statues, alarming portraits. And within this exquisite gloom and grandeur, Kitty found Raven Queen.

Raven was sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in shorts and a Tailor Quick T-shirt, one bare foot tucked up under her. On her guitar she was playing a song Kitty didn’t know, but the tune slipped inside her, slick with sadness, and nestled below her heart, pressing up with a twinge and a hush. She felt as alone as a toad in a tree.

Kitty hesitated.

No tricks here, she told herself.

Cats have instincts, and Kitty knew—she just knew—that Raven would face plenty of riddles and snags and sticky-scratchy problems during her Legacy Year. Kitty wouldn’t add to them. Not now.26

She left Queen Castle with a flick of her shadow feet, her arms out like a bird’s wings, flying through the walls. The shadow statues stared. Kitty stuck out her tongue.

One more wishing well later, Kitty was expecting to pop up near yet another fancy palace or irritatingly adorable seaside village, but instead, there ahead of her towered Ever After High. She stood there (or more accurately, floated there), staring at the gray shadow of her school, and felt a strange, tickly, bubblish feeling wander beneath her ribs.²⁷ She tried to name it: excitement. Wait, was Kitty Cheshire actually excited about something?

Riddle-diculous! Absurdish! None-of-the-sense!

And yet those little bubbles of emotions kept rising and popping in her middle, making her smile feel real and a giggle threaten to escape her throat. Spying on so many of her classmates today made her feel closer to them, as if they’d all been holding hands and playing Duck Duck Dodo or something.

She almost, kind of, nearly admitted to herself that she’d missed them. Missed the oddly sensicle and prepostrasaurusly normal classmates of her school. Missed school, too.

Skipping hither and thither and quiver In-Between, Kitty watched Lizzie rush about, trying to create a home for her wobbly-nosed hedgehog but clearly needing a Wonderlandish place for herself.

How many times had Lizzie tried to grow a Wonderlandian plant in a planter in her dorm only to watch it wither? Like Lizzie herself (and Kitty, too, for that matter), the plants just didn’t thrive far from Wonderland, especially not locked up indoors.

What Lizzie needed was an outdoors place. A bit of home. A garden. Of course, if Kitty tried to suggest that to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hearts, Lizzie would just shout “Off with your head!” But maybe she could mislead her a bit into starting with a tiny Wonderland garden for hedgehogs.…

Kitty spent some time searching the library for just the right book. When Lizzie returned, Kitty disappeared and, making just her hand tangible, pushed the book off the shelf and onto Lizzie’s shoe.

Kitty giggled, doing backflips through the silvery freedom of In-Between, and landing back where she’d been when Lizzie left hours ago as if she hadn’t budged an inch.

She reappeared and smiled wide, her smile full of wonder. Her mother used to tell her, “Smile, Kitty. It makes people wonder if you’re up to something.”

“Kitty, have you been napping there this whole day?” Lizzie asked.

“More or less,” said Kitty.28

Kitty Cheshire smiled for her mother and silently promised to always be up to something. Something wonder-ful.

No matter what, this was going to be a memorable year.²⁹